


resonating fire

by kurgaya



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 05:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12833919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: “Baze,” Chirrut whispers, slumping closer. All he can smell is blood and burning, but he can just about hear a rattle in Baze’s chest. “Baze, love. Wake up. I’m here, I’m here. I’ll -”I’ll stay.[Baze dies first AU]





	resonating fire

**Author's Note:**

> Uh. Baze-dies-first au? Cross posted from tumblr.

The master switch is cold to Chirrut’s touch. Blaster bolts and oil fires blaze around him, and Chirrut’s hands shake as he examines the console, feeling the many square buttons that protrude from the metal. It is not fear that he feels but exhaustion; he has trusted the Force to guide him this far, but he knows not how far it will guide him. Onwards he reaches, tracing this instrument of the Empire’s will until he bumps something larger - something elongated and rounded at the edges, and colder still, a block of ice in the Force that has warmed Chirrut all these years. He grasps it with one hand, knowing this to be their salvation. Behind him, the rebels fight and die for this moment, their rifles firing over Chirrut’s head to protect him, the switch, the message, and the hope that they share.

Strife burns the beach. X-wings soar over their heads, and TIE fighters shriek in pursuit. Chirrut pushes the switch forwards and hears the metal clank. There is a cry of victory from the rebel group amidst the calls of fear, hope-heavy footfalls scrabbling in the earth, but closer still is the crackle of Imperial communications among the advancing ‘troopers. Chirrut wraps his bloodied fingers around his kyber-embedded staff and steps away from the console, struggling to gauge the number of stormtroopers as the beach explodes around him. The smouldering wreck of the rebel U-wing pours flames across the battlefield. The heat scalds Chirrut’s face as he turns through the darkness; a blaster bolt hisses past him and he flinches away, stumbling off of the platform.

“Chirrut! Chirrut, you _fool_.”

There are hands on him, grasping him, clutching him. Baze’s breathing is pained and hard, and the whir of his cannon is fire erupting from a beast. But his flight-suit is rough and familiar to Chirrut, and his touch, although firm (frightened, a little too hard), is the comfort of the Force confined to one man.

“Baze!” Despite himself, despite the battle and the bloodshed, Chirrut smiles. There is seldom another way to say his husband’s name, and Chirrut laughs at Baze’s aggravated sigh. He reaches with his free hand and lays it upon Baze’s arm, turning with the bulk of Baze’s body, allowing himself to be manoeuvred away from enemy fire.

Baze’s cannon spits lightning, but it his heart that glows with the Force.

Hope rises in Chirrut’s chest like a sob. “You doubted me,” he teases, jabbing Baze’s armour with the end of his staff. Now is hardly the time for barter, but Chirrut has never been one for rules. He smiles still, face flushed with happiness; _look what I did, Baze!_ his expression seems to say, a toothy remnant of the rambunctious boy he had been. _Did you see me?_

Baze swats the staff away. “Not _you_ ,” he begins, only for a bolt to strike the console and for the world to erupt in flame.

The explosion deafens Chirrut, shrieking in his ears as he peels his face from the ground. The sand sticks to his skin in gritty, bloody patches; he doesn’t recall falling, and with his ears ringing and his eyes a perpetual darkness, he is lost, for a moment, to the pain of metal and fire tearing through him. He cannot move under the weight of agony and so he lies there, heaving into the sand. The ground quakes beneath him and the fires blaze above him. He can smell the earth and the fuel and the smoke clogging up the sky, but he cannot see anything, and he cannot even hear his own heart pounding inside of his chest.

Should the Force guide him now, Chirrut will not hear it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he rises onto his forearms, then knees. Sluggish with pain, he pats around for his staff, relieved when he discovers that it hasn’t fallen far. A quick inspection reveals a large crack in the uneti wood and splinters chipping away from the edge, but it holds firm as he stabs it into the sand. The strongest stars have hearts of kyber, and while his staff may be but wood and metal and a thousand bloody bruises, it has a core of kyber running through it. It will break as he will, one day, and as Baze did not: slowly, not all at once.

_Baze. Where is Baze?_

Chirrut leans into his staff, willing himself to move. Pain throbs in his left knee, and he can scarcely feel his lower leg. He would reach to inspect the damage but his hands will not release his staff; maybe they are stuck, glued by sweat and blood, or maybe it is terror that Chirrut can hear ringing in his ears, inflamed in his body and consuming him like a fire. Yet move he must, so he drags his feet across the sand and pitches into his staff; it steadies him with difficulty, but steadies him all the same. Briefly - perhaps, or perhaps for a while - he presses his forehead against the wood and simply breathes, blood bubbling from the corners of his mouth. Grains of sand and dirt sprinkle into his eyes and he blinks, squeezing them together with some wild yearning to see.

“Baze?” Chirrut calls, his ears tolling as the Temple bells once did. Only vertigo answers him, churning with that mounting fear in his gut. He tries again, praying that someone will hear him even though he cannot hear himself. But only his breaths fill the air: he tastes ashes on his tongue. Smoke rolls past him as the wind changes, and cinders patter across his skin.

Chirrut clutches the kyber crystal at the end of his staff and thinks, _which way?_

Something crackles through the ringing like the distant clap of a storm. He turns his head towards the sound, eyes darting without sight. Something else pushes through the screeching in his head - a voice, maybe, but not the one he wants. No, it is a mechanical sound, a cold sound, like the touch of the Force around the master switch, and Chirrut lurches to his feet without thought and drives his staff upwards under the chin of the ‘trooper. He hears the armour _crack!_ but not the swish of the rifle through the air - it strikes him across the crown and sends him reeling, but Chirrut has fought enough stormtroopers to know their size and their reach, and counters the next blow with one of his own.

The stormtrooper collapses. Chirrut spits blood on the ground to welcome the next.

The blaster bolt rips open his thigh.

Chirrut screams; hears himself scream, and staggers back. He shoves his staff into the sand and refuses to fall, pitching himself around with the momentum to smash his weapon against the stormtrooper’s helmet. Another bolt fires wide and Chirrut lurches out of the way; he’s clumsy now, tired, _bone-dead tired_ , but the need to find Baze drives him on. He fells the stormtrooper and then listens for the approach of another. The ringing in his ears is persistent, but the sounds of warfare are starting to break through: the crackle of fire and Imperial voices, and the distant exchange of weaponry in the sky. But what he truly needs to hear is Baze, even if it means listening to his husband shout out in fear once again.

(“ _Chirrut! Chirrut! Come with me!_ ”)

His knee gives way. He slides back down to the sand and lands on something hard - a gun - and he wheezes a laugh at the thought that it might be loaded. But the trigger doesn’t click as he slumps over it, the rectangular barrel jabbing into his side, and Chirrut spares a thought for the will of the Force as he tries to catch himself, digging his hands into sand and -

The shape of the gun is familiar. He could count the segments of the charge belt. It is Baze’s repeating cannon, still attached to a half-destroyed cooling tank. The exhaust pipe is missing entirely, but shards of it lay scattered around. They cut into Chirrut’s hands as he crawls onwards, calling his partner’s name.

Baze doesn’t answer, but Chirrut finds him anyway.

He is lying as still as death. Raw, open wounds mar his back; the cooling tank exploding must have ripped through his armour and flight-suit. Chirrut doesn’t know where to touch him, passing a terrible, infinite moment reaching for and pulling away from his husband. He settles a hand on Baze’s cheek, a loving gesture even now. He traces the scar on Baze’s face and the knots in his hair and smiles, hot, fat tears dribbling from his eyes.

(It’s all his eyes can do now).

“ _Baze_ ,” Chirrut whispers, slumping closer. All he can smell is blood and burning, but he can just about hear a rattle in Baze’s chest. “Baze, love. Wake up. I’m here, I’m here. I’ll -”

_I’ll stay._

Chirrut sets his staff aside to fumble for Baze’s hand. Squeezing it, he calls a little louder, brushing his thumb under the corner of Baze’s eye. The only indication that Baze stirs is the soft, pained noise that escapes him, quiet even with this. Chirrut leans down and aims a kiss for his cheek, meeting his jaw instead. Baze twitches awake as he has a hundred times before, a hundred mornings waking second after nights of falling asleep first. He turns his head to find Chirrut, and if his eyes peel open to a haze of pain, then nobody is to know.

“Chirrut?” he slurs, his hand returning something of a squeeze. The south Jedhan accent is thick in his mouth, but the blood only thickens it further. “Y‘kay?”

“I’m all right,” Chirrut lies; it may be Baze who brings in blood-money, but it is Chirrut who deals with deceit. Kyber-hearted Baze with the armour and gun has always been the better person. “The Force protects me,” he assures, and maybe that’s half a lie too.

“I protected you,” Baze grumbles, an age-old reply. His lips turn up in a smile; Chirrut feels it under his hand.

Their barter has never needed Chirrut to respond before, and so as Baze falls quiet once again, Chirrut doesn’t know what to say. He rubs his thumb back and forth across Baze’s cheek, as though hoping to warm life back into his face. He squeezes Baze’s hand tighter because he doesn’t know what else to do, and then he lays his head down on Baze’s shoulder, making good on his promise to stay.

He closes his eyes as he sees nothing, and listens to the Force ring as Baze dies.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
